Layover 101: Understanding the Basics

Welcome to Layover 101! This post will help you learn the basics of Layover and how to create awesome blended images. Let’s dive right in!

When you first open Layover, you will see arrows with explanations pointing to the different features/buttons. You will only see this the first time you open Layover, but if you need this reference in the future, tap the “i” on the left corner of the screen.

The first thing you should do is import some photos. Tap one of the boxes (layers) on the left of the screen, and you can then import photos from your camera device or take a photo on the spot.

You can change the order of your layers at any time by dragging and dropping the layers. You can also delete a layer by pressing one of the layers until red minus signs appear to the left of the boxes.

Now that your images are imported, it’s time to Crop, Blend and Mask!

Crop:
Press the Crop button on the bottom of the screen. Then tap the first button on the left, which lets you select the crop ratio. It’s 1:1 (square) by default, but you can also select 4:3 (Standard) or 3:2 (35MM Film).

The middle button lets you select the orientation (portrait or landscape). Once you’re happy with the ratio and orientation, tap the lock button located on the right.

Let’s get blending!

Blend:
Choose from 15 blend filters (Multiply, Screen, Layover, Soft Light, Hard Light, Color Dodge, Color Burn, Addition, Difference, Darken, Lighten, Hue, Saturation, Color and Luminosity).

If you’d like to apply a base layer of color to add filtering, you can do this by leaving the first square blank. Then tap the Blend button, which pulls up RGB sliders. Use these sliders to create the desired filter color.

Next, import a photo into the second layer. Once the picture is imported, you should see the blend effects on the bottom of the screen. The thumbnail shows what the blend will look like, and you can use the slider to control how dramatic or subtle you want the blend to appear.

Now it’s time to get your Mask on!

Mask
The Mask feature lets you erase specific parts of pictures to isolate elements, remove the background, and let different layers show through. The slider lets you adjust how thick or thin you want the erase marks to appear. The eraser icon (erase tool) lets you erase specific parts of the image, while the pencil icon (the “un-erase” tool) lets you paint a layer back in. The undo button on the right erases all changes (not just the last change you made, so use with caution!).

For fine-tune masking, you can enable temporary zoom by pinching your fingers apart on the screen.

To exit temporary zoom, exit out of Mask by tapping Blend or Crop.

You could stop at this point, but we’ve decided to add another layer to spice things up. So let’s return to the cat image with the mask and blend both applied.

We decided to add an image of pretty flowers as the third layer.

We spent all that time applying the mask to the kitty picture, so putting the flowers as the top layer would be counter productive. So we’ve dragged and dropped the flower image to the second layer.

The last we often like to do is move the color layer to the top. It acts like a filter to the whole canvas and can be used to help smooth layers together by giving them the same warmth/coolness across the image.

At any point you can enable distraction-free editing by tapping the little eye on the left corner of the screen. This temporarily eliminates interface elements that aren’t pertinent to the task at hand. To go back to the regular mode, tap the little eye again.

Once you’re happy with your image, tap the Share arrow on the top right of the screen. You can save it to your device, email it, or share it on Facebook, Flickr, Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram or other apps.

This concludes Layover 101. If you have any questions about Layover (or just want to say Hi!), please contact us on Facebook, Twitter, or email us at support@layoverapp.com.